Everyone was putting two and two together. In the space of one week there had been gigantic oil fires in the Valdez terminus and the Grays Harbor refinery, the main cogwheels in the West Coast energy industry. Plus there had been a massive breach in the pipeline carrying the crude oil from Yakutat Bay nonstop and directly to Grays Harbor itself. All three incidents occurring in the dead of night. This was no accident. This was a real-live crisis. The United States was under attack, by unseen marauders, saboteurs, terrorists, lunatics, Fascists, Communists, Fundamentalists, or some other screwball activists.
Washington now knew that someone had it in for Uncle Sam. The President was awakened at 3:10 A.M. and was in the Oval Office two minutes later in his pajamas. In his opinion, “That someone had better be found and stopped, real quick, before the goddamned lights go out for good.”
Admiral Morgan was in his car and headed for the Taft Bridge, driving himself at high speed to the White House, followed by three agents, who were trying and failing to stay with him in a light drizzle and a slick road surface.
By 3:15, Lieutenant Commander Ramshawe was gunning his eleven-year-old black Jaguar up the Washington–Baltimore Parkway to Fort Meade. Rear Admiral Morris was already in his office, with a phone call in to the Pentagon, to the busy line of Adm. Alan Dickson, the ex-Atlantic Fleet Commander who now occupied the chair of the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO).
Admiral Dickson was also in his office, talking to Adm. Dick Greening, Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet, who was away from his Pearl Harbor office, visiting the giant San Diego Naval Base. Stacked up waiting to speak to the CNO, in order, was Rear Adm. Freddie Curran, Commander, Submarine Force, Pacific Fleet; Gen. Tim Scannell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs; and Adm. Arnold Morgan on an encrypted speakerphone from his car.
The last call in was a raging priority for Alan Dickson, and he told Dick Greening he’d call him right back.
Vice Admiral Morgan crossed Dupont Circle like a meteor across the face of the moon, astounding two Washington Police Officers parked on the north side, who nonetheless recognized a black White House staff car when they saw one, and elected to mind their own business.
“ALAN!” yelled the President’s National Security Adviser. “Talk to George Morris or his assistant right now and get yourself up to speed. Then don’t move, I’ll be back in a half hour.”
The line went dead, and Admiral Dickson, who was already pretty well up to speed, told a hovering young Lieutenant to call back Admiral Greening and tell him not to move from his desk. Then he hit the encrypted line to George Morris, who was in the call-waiting line, anyway.
Finally, the two men spoke, and Admiral Morris, who sometimes seemed slow of thought and somewhat cumbersome in his assessments, was neither of those things this morning. He said immediately, “Alan, this country is under attack.”
“I know,” said the CNO. “And I haven’t the slightest idea how to proceed.”
It was, they both understood, the modern military dread. The unseen enemy, lurking God knows where, planning God knows what, and answering to God knows who: colloquially known as Terrorists.
Both men were interrupted by the red light from the White House, and on both of their hot lines was the voice of Vice Admiral Morgan, who was holding a phone in each ear, a feat of physicial and mental dexterity of which he was relatively proud. “SITUATION ROOM, WEST WING, 0700. DON’T BE LATE.” Down went the phone. Small talk, blow out thy brains.
Admiral Morris hurried down to Lieutenant Commander Ramshawe’s office, looking for a summary of submarine mystery sightings, possible routes into United States waters, and any other data his assistant could provide.
Both men were frantic with concern, all of it heightened because they had, in a sense, been on the case for more than a week. And now, suddenly, in the darkest hours of this night, all of their worst dreads had jumped into technicolor reality. The bastard had struck again, to deadly effect.
Admiral Morris gathered up every document his young Lieutenant Commander could throw at him, all of it laid out in carefully written detail, from the flight of the Barracuda(s), to the landing of the missiles that had destroyed Valdez. From the obvious insertion of Special Forces to slam the pipeline north of Graham Island, to the sudden, shattering destruction of all the refined fuel oil on the West Coast.
Someone was trying to put out the lights. And the President would be close to panic. Admiral Morris knew they would have to walk him carefully through this intricate and sinister scenario, but he was certain the Navy was on stream with cause, effect, and remedy. Anyway, the President rarely stepped out of line when the craggy face and glinting blues eyes of Admiral Morgan were facing him across the table. He might, however, be bolder this morning. Because the United States was essentially at war. With someone.
They gathered in President Reagan’s old Situation Room in the West Wing shortly before 7 A.M. The President, dressed now but not shaved, was the first to arrive in company with his Secretary of State, Harcourt Travis, and the Defense Secretary, Robert MacPherson. General Scannell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, arrived with the CNO, Admiral Dickson, and the last man through the big soundproof double doors was Admiral Arnold Morgan, in company with Admiral Morris, whose notes he was reading.
Four Marine guards were on guard in the corridor, and every White House security system was in place. As highly classified meetings go, this one ranked at the top level. The SWAT team that normally patrolled the roof of the building while the President was in residence had organized a team of four heavily armed agents to seal the elevator that moved to and from the lower level where the Situation Room was located.
The subject was, of course, one which dare not speak its name beyond the four walls that now surrounded the most powerful men in the country. Admiral Morgan had placed at one end of the room a huge computer screen on which was an illuminated map, showing the Asian side of the North Pacific, all the way across to the West Coast of Canada and the United States.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” said the President. “Because this is about to develop into a military meeting, I am going to appoint my National Security Adviser to act as Chairman…. Arnie, perhaps you’d take the seat at the head of the table…. I’ll sit herewith my fellow politicos Bob and Travis next to me. I imagine I’m kinda lagging in the most up-to-date information, so maybe Arnie will brief me.”
Admiral Morgan, who was unsmiling, still engrossed in Jimmy Ramshawe’s notes, muttered, “I’ll be right there, sir. And I’ll do it a lot better if someone can lay hands on a cup of coffee.”
Bob MacPherson walked to a house phone and ordered coffee and English muffins, since everyone present had been up half the night, most of them zigzagging around the city in the rain.
“Okay, sir,” said Admiral Morgan. “I want to start with the first bang, up there in the oil terminus at Valdez in Alaska, early hours of last Friday morning, February 29. Every report we have suggests two separate sets of detonations—one at the terminus itself and one minutes later at the fuel farm. There is no evidence of any attack by land, there was nothing military or civilian in the immediate airspace, and no warship from anyone’s Navy within a thousand miles.
“A massive search for clues has produced nothing. The only thing we know is the two areas did not go off bang all by themselves. And we have a couple of eyewitnesses who claim to have seen missiles coming overland south through central Alaska toward Valdez. We believe their evidence is sound, because their timing was accurate to within seconds and they could not have known that.”
The Admiral paused. “Forty-eight hours later, we have a massive breach in the new pipeline that carries the crude out of Yakutat Bay all the way down to the Grays Harbor Refinery. No evidence of skulduggery, but suspicious, to my mind, the breach happened at an obvious choke point, where the pipeline rises up to cross a shoal.”
“Why suspicious?” asked the President.
“If you wanna blow a hole in a pipeline, you need underwater guys
to get down near it. Funny it happened in the near-perfect place in the whole five hundred miles of undersea construction.”
“Okay,” said the President. “Press on.”
“Sir, at this point we were already considering the possibility that the Valdez Terminus was hit by maybe a half dozen cruise missiles. Just because there can be no other explanation. Something big hit the terminus, and it did not come from the land or air. There was no surface ship within reasonable range. Which leaves a submarine, submerged launch.”
“Jesus,” said the President. “But whose submarine?”
“Well, that’s where it becomes somewhat complicated,” said the Vice Admiral. “And if I may, I’d like just to continue to the next hit, which, as you know, happened a few hours ago. Suddenly we got the same scenario. BAM! Up goes another huge oil installation, this time the biggest fucking refinery in the country. Grays Harbor.
“What did it? Don’t know. Evidence? None. Except once more I’m hearing about two separate sets of detonations. One knocked out two fractioning towers, then something slammed into the fuel farm. Again no warships, again no aircraft, and again no possibilities over the land.
“Sir, whatever wiped out the refinery was big and powerful, and it must have been launched from a ship. Because there is no cruise missile in the world, so far as we know, with the range to get either Alaska or California from land. Unless it was ballistic, in which case we’d have tracked it and shot it down.
“Right here we’re talking about the fucking Marie Celeste. Because there was no ship. Again, sir, I come back to the likelihood of submerged launch missiles from a submarine. And I come back to it because I’m a devotee of Sherlock Holmes. When you have eliminated the impossible, only the truth remains.”
“Arnie, have we established, among everyone at this table, that the damage inflicted on Valdez, the pipeline, and Grays Harbor, must have been military?”
“Well, I haven’t had time to ask everyone, sir. But there’s no doubt in my mind. Whatever hit us packed an unbelievable wallop, and the delivery of such a device could scarcely have been achieved by a civilian.”
Everyone nodded in agreement. “Which brings us to the next subject,” said Arnold. “Timing. Which, as in all crimes, is critical. OK, now the missiles were fired at Valdez a little after midnight on Friday morning. The pipeline blew probably just before midnight on Sunday. That’s a gap of about seventy-two hours, all day Friday, all day Saturday, pipeline busts late Sunday.
“We have to assume the pipeline was hit by a sticky bomb or sea mine of some kind. And it was obviously primed around twenty-four hours before it exploded. Anyone with a lick of sense would be as far away as possible from the spot they inserted their frogmen.
“We’re probably looking at maybe thirty-eight hours from the datum between firing and fixing the stickies, right?”
Again everyone nodded in agreement. “So, whoever fired at Valdez fired from within a couple of hundred miles of the hit point on the pipe, because, believe me, that submarine is moving real slow. And they had a lot of preparation for the insertion of the frogmen.
“So, gentlemen, we got a fucking interloper right near the coast of Canada. At least, we know exactly where he was at midnight on Saturday, right near the Overfall Shoal. And next thing we know, there’s a major hit at Grays Harbor this morning—that’s a little over seven degrees of latitude south, 430 nautical miles, plus eighty miles to get out of the Dixon Entrance…that’s 510 miles.”
The Vice Admiral rose to his feet and walked to the computerized chart. “I’m talking right here,” he said, pointing to the shoal. “And right here,” he added pointing to Grays Harbor. “And the time difference between the pipe burst and the refinery hit is just about five days—at five knots, he makes 120 nautical miles a day. That’s four days and then some. But he’s not stopping at latitude forty-seven, is he?”
“Why not?” asked the President. “He wants to be near the target for his missiles, right?”
“Sir, his missiles can be accurately fired from one thousand miles away, so he’ll almost certain go further south than he needs just to get distance from the hit. No one wants to be near an uproar zone. He’s probably another hundred miles further south, which would take him almost exactly five days to the hour. Down here somewhere…”
Arnold pointed further down the chart and added, “He’ll want to be well offshore maybe one hundred fifty or two hundred miles. So my guess is, he was somewhere in here when he launched. From our point of view, right on time.”
He described a circle on the chart with his right hand. Then he stepped back and spread both hands apart, pausing for a moment, before saying, “Christ knows where he is now. That was possibly accurate five hours ago. I’d guess he was still real slow, but I have not the slightest idea where he is now.”
“You mean he could have fired these things from the middle of the Pacific?” asked the President.
“Sure could, sir. But I don’t think so. He came inshore for the Alaska attacks. And he came south for the refinery. My guess is he’s now headed inshore to noisy water, staying as deep as he can, and as slow as he can.”
“What the hell’s noisy water?” asked the Secretary of State.
“Oh, that part of the Pacific is very awkward, Harcourt,” replied Arnold. “Cold currents from the north, warm currents from the south…produces some strange thermal effects, currents which ‘bend’ the sonar rays. And it’s always much more noisy near the shore…. creates a kind of audio ‘fog’ effect…hard to hear anything. He’ll probably creep along the coast, with one hundred feet under his keel, and if he’s slow enough no one will detect him.
“Right now, gentlemen, we’re kind of stuck with what I call the ‘flaming datum’—that means we cannot do a damn thing in the way of finding this bastard until he does something else. And those darned missiles of his allow him to stand right off, and hurl his punches long-distance. It’s the nightmare of submarine warfare…. and remember, gentlemen, we’ve never had a terrorist in a nuclear boat before. But we got one now. I’m damn certain about that.”
“Jesus Christ,” said the President. “You mean we’re powerless?”
“Just about, sir, I’m afraid.”
“Well, we have a massive Navy that is always asking me for more money. Why can’t they organize a goddamned search or something?”
“Sir, I expect you’ve heard of a needle in a haystack,” said Arnold. “We’d be goddamned lucky to find the haystack, never mind the needle. We’re looking at an area of maybe three hundred miles by four hundred miles in which he could be anywhere…. we don’t even know whether he turned east, west, north, or south. That’s over one hundred thousand square miles…. and we can’t see him or hear him. He could pick a spot in deepish water, park his ship one thousand five hundred feet below the surface and stay there for a fucking year, then go home, wherever the hell that might be.”
“Sir,” interjected Admiral Dickson. “I have to say on behalf of our very expensive Navy that this kind of wide search is absolutely futile. A total waste of time, money, and effort. If we pulled out the entire Pacific fleet, their chances of finding an elusive nuclear submarine would be about a million to one. That’s why we have so many of them ourselves. Submarines are the single most dangerous weapon on earth, as the residents of Grays Harbor have just found out.”
“OK, OK, I got it.” The President was becoming visibly rattled. “But, Arnie, you’re always telling me we have a handle on every moving submarine in the world. And the first time we need real information, hell, we’ve got a damned great nuclear ship on the loose, smashing up the U.S. of A.—and no one knows where it is, where it lives, or who owns the bastard. I mean, give me a break, willya? The Navy costs about a billion bucks an hour to run, and you’re telling me we have to sit here like a bunch of Cub Scouts watching this fucking maniac beat us to death?”
“Sir,” said Admiral Morgan. “In the end, we’ll probably have to nail the archer, not t
he arrow.”
“What kind of a goddamned riddle is that?” retorted the President.
“A pretty easy one because right here we’re looking at terrorism on the same scale as 9/11, except with hardly any death, but identical ramifications. And it’s state sponsored. Which narrows the field down. I doubt if even the old Al-Qaeda could have managed a nuclear submarine. Guys dressed in fucking bedsheets don’t usually drive ’em. But somewhere at the back of all this is a foreign State or Republic, maybe even two. That’s who we’re after.”
“That might be who you’re after, Arnie,” snapped the President, now visibly furious. “But I’m after this fucking nutcase who’s knocking down oil refineries….”
“Sir, we are not without a few clues here,” replied the Admiral. “And it would be better if we could avoid all-out global war. But we suspect the submarine is Russian built, but flying the flag of a third party, very possibly China….”
“CHINA!” yelled the President. “Then you are talking global warfare! Jesus Christ!”
“Sir, so far as we can tell, there is only one submarine in all the world that could somehow have crept through Arctic waters, across the Pacific, and hit Alaska. It’s a twenty-year-old Russian Sierra I, Barracuda Class, Type 945. We’ve accounted for every other submarine ever built.”
The President hated playing cat-and-mouse with Arnold Morgan because he always ended up looking like a goddamned child. Especially in front of his top people. He wanted to say, “Well, go find it, smartass, right now, and stop bothering me with details.” But he knew better.
Instead, he muttered, “Please go on, Admiral.”
“Well, they recently transferred this ship from their Northern Fleet to the Pacific Fleet and parked it in Petropavlovsk….”
“Where the hell’s that?” asked the President, impatiently.
“Southern end of the Kamchatka Peninsula,” said Arnold. “Big Russian Navy base in Eastern Siberia, ass-end of nowhere. We had already tracked that ship every mile of the way on its Fleet Transfer from the Murmansk area, but we now know it had been sold to the Chinese, because it was too expensive to run.”
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